Prosecutor demands harsher sentence for Turkish policeman who killed protester

ANKARA

Ethem Sarısülük, 26, was shot during the Gezi protests in Ankara on June 1, 2013.

A Supreme Court of Appeals prosecutor’s office has issued a notification that the seven-year, nine-month jail sentence for Ahmet Şahbaz - the policeman who shot and killed a protester during last year’s Gezi protests - was "insufficient."

As it was understood that Şahbaz “saw the group in front of him and shot by targeting,” the notification said, the officer should be charged with “premeditated murder,” not “possible premeditated murder.”

The prosecutor’s office therefore demanded that the Sept. 3 verdict be reversed.

Protester Ethem Sarısülük, 26, was shot during protests in Ankara on June 1, 2013, a day after mass protests erupted over the police’s brutal crackdown in Istanbul’s Gezi Park. He died in hospital two weeks later.

The case came into the spotlight after the court initially ruled to not order pre-trial detention for Şahbaz.

Murat Yılmaz, the lawyer for the Sarısülük family, said after the final verdict that the "light verdict" had in fact “rewarded the killers.”

“Ethem Sarısülük has been killed one more time today. His family was kicked. We witnessed unlawful practices in the Anakara courthouse before, but we didn’t expect this much,” Yılmaz said at the time.